The Dead, They Sleep
by Shatteredsand
Summary: Elena has chosen who she really loves and, needless to say, someone's heart had to break. A fight errupts and only one brother walks away.


**AN: Dedicated to ****The Labyrinths Scribe****who suggested that I one-shot the battle between Damon and Stefan after Elena breaks one of their hearts.**

**Warnings: Language, violence, character death**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Vampire Diaries; the poem Damon says is The Dead They Sleep by Samuel Hoffenstein, which is also where I got the title.**

**The Dead, They Sleep**

The rain falls in torrents. Thunder roars. Lightning explodes. And facing each other in a shared love's driveway, two brothers stand in the middle of it all. Rivets of rain streak through Damon's raven hair, matting its unruly lengths to his forehead. Stefan's shorter brown tuffs simply fall limp against the onslaught.

Damon glares at the foolishness of his younger brother, fire in his impossible ice blue eyes. Stefan stares at the monster his older brother has become, sorrow and pain crying out silently.

Damon clenches his hands into fists so tightly his knuckles whiten and his tendons rise flush against his skin, desperate to protect the very reason for his existence now that he finally has her.

"Elena," Stefan pleads, begging, hopeless. Defeated. "I can smell him all over you."

"We're not together anymore, Stefan." She says softly, still trying to spare his feelings. "It's none of your business."

It is though. Because he had been so sure that she didn't mean it, that they were going to get back together. That she still loved him the way she used to.

"Do you love him?" He can barely whisper the words; can hardly force them through his traitorous lips.

But she doesn't answer, just looks down and away. An answer in and of itself.

"You bastard!" Stefan yells, face changing before their eyes and charging his brother. Damon is faster though, stronger though. And Stefan is sent flying away from him with the slightest push.

"I'll kill you!" Stefan tries to shout, but really wheezes because Damon broke more than a few ribs with that effortless shove.

"Don't do this." Damon asks honestly, sincerely wanting to avoid this conflict. Stefan just glowers. "Please." It is whispered so softly the Elena, held protected behind him can't even hear it with her human hearing.

And it is the sound of Damon begging that finally breaks Stefan, really breaks him. Because he knows, absolutely knows. Damon is begging him for her. Because he's become someone better than he was; someone who loved and was loved.

Elena's love is no longer Stefan's and it _kills_ him.

Bloodlust rage consumes him and he charges again, pure viciousness overcoming Damon's superior gifts. A spurt of black blood jettisons from Damon's nose as it breaks and mends in the blink of a mortal's eye.

"Damon!" Elena's anguished cry does nothing but cast Stefan further into his frenzy and ignite Damon's blood boiling fury that Stefan would risk her this way. Might even hurt her on purpose in his anger. Might kill her in vengeance.

"NO!" Damon's roar drowns out the thunder and for the flutter of a heartbeat, everything is still.

Then the fight is on in earnest. Damon hurls his brother from him, gameface finally making an appearance as he gives chase. Forcing the fight further away from his lover and her family. This ends tonight, he knows. They cannot survive this betrayal again. They cannot bear to see the other love what they think should be theirs and theirs alone. One of them is going to die. Maybe both of them. But either way, this is the last night Damon will see his brother alive. Might be the last night he sees anything.

Damon begins the fight again the moment his brother comes into view, knowing his brother is far beyond reason. A flurry of rapid punches sends Stefan reeling, small cuts speckling his face before knitting back together. Damon reaches out and knots his hands in the collar of Stefan's shirt. Without hesitation, he sinks his fangs deeply into Stefan's neck. A strangled cry of panic escapes Stefan's shaking lips, but Damon pays it no mind. He can't. This has to end.

The recycled blood is bitterly sweet. It tastes like Katherine and family and hatred and love. It tastes like everything he had ever felt for his baby brother. Every second spent holding the trembling infant, every game played, every moment missing him when he wasn't there. Every second spent fighting with the young man who had stolen his girl away, every blow exchanged, every moment hating the traitorous bastard.

It tastes like Stefan.

Damon jerks his teeth away from his brother's flesh, unable to bear the taste of killing Stefan on his tongue. He hates his brother. He truly, deeply does. No amount of mercy and forgiveness could ever undo the damage done to his heart by the man-boy bleeding in his hands. But as much as he hates him…

He loves him far more.

Stefan lurches in Damon's grasp and twists his arm to an awkward angle. Damon hisses a gasp of pain. Stefan pulls away from his brother before rushing in again. He knits his hands together and brings them down over his brother's head as the broken limb heals. Damon stumbles to a knee. He snaps back to his feet almost immediately, an animalistic snarl on lips stained with his brother's blood.

Stefan chokes on his own growl as Damon curls a hand around his blood-slicked throat. With a mighty heave, Damon sends his brother flying across the clearing. The younger Salvatore lands heavily, skids through the grass and mud, and crashes into a large oak with enough force to bring it down.

The tree slams onto Stefan with a noise lost in thunder.

"Damon!" he cries, begging again. This time for his brother's aid, forgetting that his brother is the one who put him there.

Damon approaches his fallen brother slowly, cautiously, warily. But his face has returned to normal. The rain has washed the crimson stain of Stefan's blood from his mouth. His appearance is unscuffed, untouched. Nothing Stefan had done has left a mark. Stefan, however, is covered in mud and his own blood, the battle taking place faster than he has the capacity to heal.

The look in Damon's eye reminds Stefan the reason he's under a tree in the first place. Reminds him why they had been fighting. Reminds him that Damon did it again. Reminds him that Damon stole everything from him. _Again_.

But the rage is gone. All that's left is the sickeningly hollow feeling inside. Elena chose Damon. She _chose_.

"I love her, Stefan." Damon confesses almost too softly to be heard over the pouring rain even with preternatural hearing.

"I know. And I hate you for it." But there is no venom in it, because this is not Damon's fault for once. "I _hate _you."

"I hate you too." But it sounds more like "I love you".

"I wish I had killed you on my birthday."

"I wish I had killed you in 1864."

"I hope you spend the rest of your eternity as lost and miserable as I spent the first century and a half of mine."

"I hope…" But Damon cannot continue the game, cannot damn his brother before he kills him. "I hope you find the peace in your next life that so eluded you in this one."

"Death isn't so bad. I've done it before." Stefan tries to joke, but Damon is somber for once. There is no glib jokes or witty reparte. Only solace.

"The dead they sleep a long, long sleep; the dead they rest, and their rest is deep; the dead have peace, but the living weep." He intones quietly over his fallen brother.

"Ha." Stefan tries to laugh, but there's a branch or something in his stomach and he ends up coughing up blood instead. "My brother, the poet."

"Only for four people in the whole world, baby brother. Two of them are dead…" a weighty silence. "And the third will be joining them shortly."

"I'm glad." Stefan closes his eyes against the pain. "I couldn't live without her, you know?"

"Yeah, Stef." Damon closes his eyes to, fighting back tears he hasn't shed in centuries. "I know."

"I'm glad it was you. I'm glad it wasn't some other mortal or something."

"Some mortal over our ethereal beauty and vamp sex?" A ghost of a smile on Damon's lips, "Foolish little St. Stefan."

"And, I'm glad the end is like this. With you."

"Yeah, me too." Because if anybody is going to kill Stefan Salvatore, it'll be Damon Salvatore. It's his baby brother and, dammit, he's earned that right.

"Tell me about Mom." Stefan murmurs when Damon breaks off a branch of the tree.

"She was beautiful." Damon whispers, closing his eyes again knowing that nothing could stop the tears from coming this time. "She had your brown eyes and when she smiled the whole room lit up." With a sob, Damon drives the stake into his baby brother's heart. A shuddering intake of breath and Stefan is _gone_.


End file.
